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I recently replayed Custom Robo and I don't remember the game being a decent challenge. The odd thing is I'm more tactical now compared to the guns blazing style I used to have for the game which ironically made it easy. This doesn't look like an isolated incident either as my Skyrim and Kingdoms of Amalur experience is easy as a warrior but tedious as a mage or assassin. But I know strategy is a good thing to use when it's available and in some games like FFXIII it's the only way to reliably win. Pokemon is also good about letting strategy be super effective (pun intended).

So yeah. Some games are ironically more difficult when you're strategizing. What do you think about it and what, if any, experience do you have with this or is this just me and my weird gaming experience?

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I recently replayed Custom Robo and I don't remember the game being a decent challenge. The odd thing is I'm more tactical now compared to the guns blazing style I used to have for the game which ironically made it easy. This doesn't look like an isolated incident either as my Skyrim and Kingdoms of Amalur experience is easy as a warrior but tedious as a mage or assassin. But I know strategy is a good thing to use when it's available and in some games like FFXIII it's the only way to reliably win. Pokemon is also good about letting strategy be super effective (pun intended).

So yeah. Some games are ironically more difficult when you're strategizing. What do you think about it and what, if any, experience do you have with this or is this just me and my weird gaming experience?

I usually don't strategize, because I suck at stealth.

1. So, Skyrim, since I played it quite a lot, with many different characters. Strategizing made it much, much easier. I'm a stealthy mage right now with a bit of warrior for the times strategy goes wrong, and I simply don't get my ass kicked as much as when I was a warrior (or pure mage, pure mages just suck in Skyrim).

2. A different experience would be Deus Ex Human Revolution. I found strategizing difficult because stealth in that game IS difficult (unlike Skyrim, where is much easier to be stealthy). Rambo style was much easier, BUT, if you master stealth, then it beats rambo style by far (at least that's what I saw on youtube).

There are many games that favor certain classes (which are later considered OP, imba, EZmode, etc.) but I won't get into that, because it's got less to do with strategizing and more with sheer damage output.

So, my most recent experience was Killer is Dead, your casual hack & slash with 4 sub-weapons, a few special moves,evasive/block counters and stuff like that. At first, I just headshotted everything in my way, then I got a nifty plasma cannon...and from that point on, just blast everything in the game, bosses included. Of course, you could sit around, dodging and executing enemies for extra bonuses, but that stuff takes forever :P

Another game was Resident Evil 5; you'd expect to play it survival horror-style, hoarding ammo and getting hit as little as possible while avoiding unnecessary fights, but there's so much ammunition and medication lying around that it's easier to do as stated above: headshot everything and keep walking.

Finally, Demon's souls. Yes, for a new player, every step is a leap of faith towards a probable death, but after starting a new character, I didn't sit around carefully crafting bows and swords to exploit the weaknesses of every enemy; I picked up my trusty rapier and backstabbed/riposted every single enemy that I could. Finished the game in ~20 hours on the same soul level as my first character, who had taken 84 hours to do pretty much the same.

^that last part. Some RPG games trow at you many attacks, weaknesess, skills, items and all that stuff. blah blah blah, that's way over the top - (persona, I'm looking at you) - just stick with a favored style and keep a second one as backup for when the first one isn't working.

That video is not entirely correct. SC:BW is no where a balanced game (T>Z>P). It is actually one unique examples where the game is balanced through imbalances (but not the cyclical imbalanced mentioned) where each race has "imbalanced" units which open up opportunities in the form of a timing attack. Thus the balance through imbalance achieved in metagame.

Referring to BW as an action game is... kind of cute. It is true to a certain degree: In BW you are not only playing against the opposing player, but also wrestling with the interface at the same time. This is what makes RTS, "real time" instead of turn based, because at the very foundation of the genre, having the real time reflex *is* what makes RTS a RTS.

When I say games are not balanced, it include both types of perfect and cyclical imbalance since few games achieve the latter.

When it comes to tactics and strategy, it often means you need to
- Have synergy withing your forces (build/composition/etc)
- "Have a metagame", while maintaining a clear strength and weakness of various tactical choices

Sadly, games these days often just have this one clear solution to... everything.

As mentioned, a perfectly balanced game is not fun, but walking around the world like a god is also not what I would consider fun as well. Developers often fail to give "weaknesses" to a form of metagame, some sort of a limiter. I guess I don't blame them esp when it is a single player game, because to the average joe, smashing faces left and right might be fun. Hell, to some 12 yr old, walking into a room and have every enemy explode by your mere presence might be considered fun (side note: hacking games ruin the fun). I am far beyond that: I want challenges. I am a believe that as you get stronger, enemies should also become a lot stronger since you now have more experience with what you are doing and more tools to deal with the various challenges I face.

I like to use World of Warcraft a lot as an example of RPG balance. Over the years I am seeing the game go from having unique classes to this game where "perfect balance" is located. By that I am not talking about the game being perfectly balanced, but the homogenization of classes. Because it is a highly competitive multiplayer game, you just cannot have niches. You cannot have say, a class that is excellent at dealing damage while moving while another class being a stationary glass cannon - because we just sit everyone in class A in one fight and stack class B, while we do the exact opposite in another fight.

I thought "perfect imbalance" only really applies to multiplayer games? Where there are strats and counter-strats to be discovered.

Single player games though, this "imbalance" can only be abused by the player, since computer AI is not smart enough to figure out which set of tactics to use. As such, since the AI would be pretty much hard coded to behave a certain way, and if the imbalance is big enough, there would ALWAYS be a clear, optimal way of doing things.

As such, from my experience of RPGs, these imbalances tend to favour certain playstyles in certain genres or series. Action RPGs for example tend to favour the 'hulk smash!' type of playstyle (ala Bethesda games/Kingdoms of Alamur/Diablo), unless they're more technical in which they favour reflexes, tactical movements, or exploiting weaknesses (ala Zelda or Demon/Dark Souls).

On the other end of the spectrum, Strategy RPGs tend to have you clobbered if you don't plan your moves well ahead of time (unless severely overlevelled of course), though it has some exceptions where just straight up clobbering is the best way to do things (Disgaea and the general NISA game comes to mind).

The general RPGs are a mixed bag. Like you can expect Atlus games to be HEAVY on tactical elements, as their MegaTen line differentiated itself from other series due to this playstyle. Wizardry-esque (ala Dragon Quest) games tend to favour 'hulk smash!'; either you can do enough damage before you die, or you die (and reload to grind until you can do enough damage or you outheal the incoming damage). Final Fantasy battle system tends to be the same, with the exception of 12/13 being more tactical than the other offline FF games.

This is one of the weakness of gaming: the graphics engine leaps ahead every year while computer AI remains ever so dumb.

Some games limit the AI to a single style (ie: each monster have only a single attack). Some uses a greedy algorithm (always use the attack type that does the most damage). Most AIs are individual basis instead of team based.

Even today, "our AI is smart enough to provide coverfire for withdrawing troops" still make an AI sound amazing...